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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

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Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

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Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds.

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound.

Dominic Trevett / Ikon Images

A colleague recently messaged us, "How and why should teachers use sound walls-and are they different from word walls?" We believe that both word walls and sound walls can be of value in the classroom, but there are distinct differences between the two.

Word walls, a print-to-speech tool, are organized by a word's initial letter. This can get tricky when you have a word like knot, which begins with the letter K and the sound N. That's where the sound wall comes into play, helping students spell words by listening to the phonemes, or the smallest unit of sound in speech in a word.

Sound walls are speech-to-print tools used to categorize phonemes. The word cat, for example, has three phonemes, c/a/t. In the English language, we identify about 44 phonemes using the 26 letters of the alphabet. In many ways, grasping the sounds of the 44 phonemes is like cracking a code for our early learners. Sound walls allow students to investigate sounds and eventually learn high-frequency words.

Some common materials for sound walls include mouth articulation cards, phoneme group labels, sound cards for phonemes, and sound spelling cards with power bar. For instance, the power bar is a visual cue to show how often the particular spelling of the sound is used. The sound /k/ has three different spelling patterns: "c," "k," and "ck." The power bar cards give clues to show students how often a certain spelling pattern is used in words. This way, students can make more informed spelling choices when they're unsure about how to spell out a sound.
Courtesy of TN Department of Education
Here, the "c" spelling has the largest bar, so this is the spelling most often used for the /k/ sound.

Organizing the Wall

Creating the sound wall before school begins can help teachers consider exactly where each new sound should be positioned. Arranging common sound patterns, mouth position cards, and power bar cards together creates organization.

When setting up the sound wall, arrange consonants on the left and the vowels on the right. The consonants are organized according to the type of sound/phoneme (stops, fricatives, affricates, glides, liquids, and nasals) and if the sound is voiced or unvoiced. The vowels are organized in a V shape called the vowel valley. The vowel valley on your classroom wall will show how the mouth looks and feels as each vowel sound is vocalized. At the top of the valley, the mouth is mostly closed, and slowly, as you descend in the valley, the mouth opens.
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Once the sound wall is organized and affixed to your classroom wall, cover each sound with a piece of paper (in the image above, blue paper was used). When sounds that have not been taught are concealed, the wall is initially a mystery to students. Each day, review the sounds already introduced, and reveal a new sound by removing the blue paper. Finally, if appropriate, add the sound card. The sound card is an image and matching word serving as the example for the phoneme.

Depending on the grade, sound walls may look and progress differently. In kindergarten, for example, not all sound patterns are introduced, so the wall may not be completely uncovered at the end of the year.

In my (Danielle's) kindergarten classroom, the following five steps help me support my students:

1. Review: Reviewing all previously learned sounds and reciting a chant for each sound: /d/, /d/, /d/, /d/ as in dog (the word being the sound example for that pattern).

2. Practice: Practice the new sound for the day, focusing on mouth and tongue positions. We use small mirrors when possible to observe our mouths.

3. Notice: Notice if the chin drops to determine whether the sound is a consonant or a vowel. Ask students to place the top of their hand flat under their chin to feel the drop. Query students, "Did you feel your chin drop? Does the sound belong in our vowel valley?"

4. Explore: Explore the new sound. Practice singing the sound together. Can the sound be held out, or does it stop? Query students, "Can you hold the sound out like a musical note?"

5. Determine: Determine if the sound is voiced or unvoiced by feeling for vibrations in the throat. Ask students to place their entire hand lightly around their neck. Then, make the sound and feel for vibrations, and ask them, "Can you feel the vibration?"
Courtesy of Danielle Rusk Carter
Spicing Up the Sound Wall

If you're looking to add some color to your basic sound wall configuration, consider taking photos of your students' mouths making the stops, nasals, fricatives (and so on) and post their mouth images on classroom walls or on your classroom digital portfolio. Students can then use these images to make individual mini-books for future reference; and if they have access to iPads, the Book Creator app works nicely for this purpose. Teachers can even generate QR codes on each sound and capture video of student mouth positions with sound. Now students can use the QR code to verify sounds and mouth positions.

Highlight use of the sounds; continually refer to the wall throughout the day and not just during the literacy block.

When teachers notice that students have mastered a sound, it can be uplifting to let students teach their peers about the sounds they're familiar with-for example, saying "Wow, Oliver and Samhar both have the "oo" sound; if you need help, ask Oliver or Samhar."

Set up mirrors in front of the sound wall to get students to practice the sounds as part of their daily routine.

Add a lowered table or floor space under the sound wall where students can freely sit while writing. They can use the wall for referencing sound card words, self-checking spellings, and practicing sounding out to support independent writing.

To ensure that students retain the sounds they've learned, here are a few tips to incorporate sound wall learning into the existing school schedule:

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Using Sound Walls in Early Elementary Classrooms

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Sound walls guide students to investigate phonemes and make informed choices when they're unsure how to spell out a sound.

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Sound Walls and the Science of Reading

If you've ever used a word wall in your classroom, or have seen one in use, you may be aware that these displays of high-frequency words, arranged alphabetically, have long been used to help students identify patterns, expand vocabulary, reinforce spelling, and more. However, as an alternative to word walls, many literacy experts find the use of sound walls to be an effective tool for phonics instruction, which helps students visually see how letters and their associated sounds correspond.

Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence. The research behind the science of reading suggests that while learning to speak is, for most children, a very natural and intuitive process, the same is not true of reading. It simply doesn't come naturally and so must be taught in a systematic and explicit way.

Sound walls support key aspects of learning to read that are backed by the science of reading. These include phonemic awareness (the ability to isolate and manipulate the smallest units of sounds within spoken language) and phonics (the ability to make the connection between the sounds of spoken language and the printed letters and words on a page).

Sound walls are a logical, effective way to teach these skills in a way that works for students. Let's dive deeper to learn what sound walls are and how we can implement them in classrooms!

What Is a Sound Wall?

Sound walls help children isolate and identify the individual sounds that make up words and link how a word is spoken to how it is written and spelled.

In Sound Walls: Why Do We Need Them and How Do We Use Them?, the Mississippi Department of Education explains that "a sound wall supports students by focusing on the articulation of sounds/phonemes and the various letter or letter patterns that represent the sounds/phonemes in words." Sound walls and phonics fit naturally together, as a sound wall "supports explicit instruction of phonics" and "grouping words by their sounds is an effective strategy for teaching reading and spelling."

Sound walls group words by the 44 speech sounds, or phonemes, that make up the English language. A phoneme is the "smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the element p in "tap," which separates that word from "tab," "tag," and "tan." Similarly, sh is a phoneme in the word "shape" and ch is a phoneme in the word "chip." These subtle changes-affecting just one sound in these words-can dramatically change the word's meaning.

Phonemes can have different spelling variations, called graphemes. One example is the phoneme for the soft /c/ sound in "cell" and the /s/ sound in "sell"-they sound the same, but use different letters of the alphabet. "Blue" and "blew" also sound the same but have different meanings and spellings.

A young learner might hear the word "knee," and think it's spelled "nee." On a traditional word wall, that child might look in vain under "N" for the word "knee." When starting to read, the child might see the word "knee" in a story and experience confusion. Thinking the printed word ought to start with a /k/ sound, the student might miss the link between the word on the page and the spoken word.

Because a sound wall arranges words by sounds, not by the alphabet, they help students to properly associate spoken sounds with printed words-and to match phonemes with graphemes.

For example, a sound wall might include a section for the /k/ sound. That section would feature a "phoneme card" with a "/k/" printed on it. Under that card, the teacher could include a number of examples of how that sound is represented in printed words, each accompanied by a picture. For example:

This shows students that the "/k/" sound can have different spellings.

Sound walls also have a unique component, according to this resource from the Louisiana Department of Education, in that they also include images of students' mouths articulating the different phonemes. "Students can make the connection between what a phoneme sounds like and what their mouths should be doing when they are saying that phoneme. These images should be placed directly over the phoneme card on the sound wall."

Courtney Schoen, an educator in Las Vegas, Nevada, created a sound wall that she could share with more than 40 teachers in the district and got a student volunteer to model the mouth shapes in photographs. "I started utilizing it last year and saw so many lightbulbs go on for both the students and the teachers with whom I work," she says.

In addition to including illustrations or photos of students' mouths, you can also use mirrors in direct instruction with the students, as did April Atkins, a third-grade teacher from Alabaster, Alabama. During her second year of implementing a sound wall, she learned a great deal about students' needs for explicit instruction on air flow, teeth/tongue placement, lip position, and voiced versus unvoiced sounds:

As I assessed my students' spelling errors, I now knew why they mixed up "f" and "th" in their writing...at the speech level, they were not placing their teeth and tongue correctly! And now it made sense why "ch" and "sh" confused the students...they just didn't understand the air flow differences between those two sounds. It started to make much more sense to me. The sound wall gave me a deeper understanding. Now I was equipped with the strategies to help my students. I pulled out mirrors, and I worked with the students who needed guidance, holding up the mirrors as they spoke the sounds so they could see the shapes their mouths made. The progress was exciting. I had never been able to help kids in this way. They started to connect the phonemes and graphemes more easily and consistently.

Try it yourself! Say the word "cheese" out loud. Your mouth makes the shape of a slight smile, your teeth part, and your chin drops slightly. Now say the word "shut." Your mouth purses, and your chin pushes forward slightly. While /ch/ and /sh/ may seem to be very similar at first glance, illustrations or photographs that show what the mouth looks like as it is making these sounds can help solidify students' understanding of phonemes-leading to improvement in reading and writing skills.

Sound Wall vs. Word Wall

In what other ways do sound walls differ from word walls?

Word walls are arranged by the beginning letter of the words, displayed alphabetically from A-Z. Under the letter "A," a teacher might attach cards for words such as "are," "and," and "any." The idea is that students can easily see the word wall when refreshing their memory on how to spell a word, for example. Teachers have historically used word walls to cement knowledge of common sight words and to introduce new vocabulary.

Sound walls, on the other hand, are arranged by sounds rather than by printed letters. How does that make them more effective than word walls?

Sound walls are built on the premise that students need to be explicitly taught phonological and phonemic awareness. The ability to decode and identify sounds is a vital part of learning to become a fluent reader. So rather than starting from a focus on print, sound walls start by focusing on speech.

The ways in which the 26 letters of our alphabet can be grouped to make the 44 phonemes in the English language can be confusing for a beginning reader. Imagine a sentence such as, "Hey, the fish ate eight pieces of fake bait in one day." In just this one sample sentence, we can see that the long vowel sound of /ā/ is spelled in six different ways (h ey, ate, eight, f ake, b ait, d ay)! Sound walls can help students make sense of how sounds and speech translate to letter patterns.

April Atkins, the third-grade teacher from Alabama, says, "I initially put a sound wall up in my room three years ago after learning about the importance of learning to read from speech to print. Connecting the speech sounds, or phonemes, to the letters, or graphemes, is crucial for young children learning to read."

Sound Wall Examples

To build a sound wall, you may need a lot of dedicated space! One teacher to whom we spoke, Angela Premo, a first-grade teacher in Malone, New York, printed and laminated all the components of a comprehensive sound wall and quickly discovered it took up an entire wall of her classroom! However, she's committed to bringing more science of reading practices into her teaching, so the sound wall is there to stay.

But some teachers have found clever ways to display sound walls in smaller spaces. Courtney Schoen, the educator from Nevada, used a trifold poster board. There are even virtual versions of sound walls available online so that students can access them on their devices.
(Take a look at these sound wall examples from Courtney Schoen.)

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Science of Reading: Sound Walls in the Classroom

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Based in the science of reading, sound walls in the classroom help educators reinforce the importance of explicitly teaching the skills of letter-sound correspondence.

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Using Sound Walls to Promote Independent Spellers - Christina Novelli, Kristin L. Sayeski, 2024

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Improving students’ spelling proficiency can increase their reading performance. Unfortunately, many students with specific learning disabilities in reading str…

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Kindergarten Class/ 11/13

Demonstrated Use of Sound wall . first time students interacted with sound wall. Introduced 3 letters using scripts. The students really understood how it worked and were able to describe sound and placement in mouth. Teacher introduced a letter following my model. She was successful as well. Really excited to return to work with students with sound wall.

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Written by Dr. Mary E. Dahlgren and Dr. Antonio A. Fierro

April 2024

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You can use sound/spelling walls in any classroom. Instructional know-how is critical.

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Dr. Antonio A. Fierro and Dr. Mary E. Dahlgren emphasize the importance of instructional expertise in utilizing Sound/Spelling Walls effectively in classrooms. Drawing from their experiences and research, they highlight the necessity of explicitly teaching the connection between phonemes and graphemes, providing articulatory descriptors, and offering cross-linguistic connections, particularly for English learners.

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Sound Walls Explained: Research, Tips, and Tricks – Structured Literacy

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30. Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls | 2022 Literacy Symposium

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You are welcome to print copies for non-commercial use, or a limited number for educational purposes, as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact the author or publisher listed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Transitioning from Word Walls to Sound Walls

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sound walls support students with learning those tricky high-frequency words. They also support students in retaining and learning to read unfamiliar words on their own. A sound wall does the work of matching our articulation of speech sounds/phonemes to the letters/graphemes that represent those sounds.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
You can use sound/spelling walls in any classroom. Instructional know-how is critical.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr. Antonio A. Fierro and Dr. Mary E. Dahlgren emphasize the importance of instructional expertise in utilizing Sound/Spelling Walls effectively in classrooms. Drawing from their experiences and research, they highlight the necessity of explicitly teaching the connection between phonemes and graphemes, providing articulatory descriptors, and offering cross-linguistic connections, particularly for English learners.

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3rd graders are enjoying uncovering new cards on the Sound Wall as they are introduced in Blast. We discuss what they feel their mouths doing, whether they feel air, and what they feel in their throat. The students use what their mouths are doing and their knowledge of the sound (using the pictures) to identify which card we will uncover. They have had great success with this.

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Robin 2/10

3rd grader are enjoying uncovering sounds as they correspond to RGR lessons-

students are consciously making sounds and describing articulation of tongue and feeling air.

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Today, while teaching a lesson on short i and long i vowel phonemes, a student referred to the Sound Wall for the short i sound. It was great to see students making use of the Sound Wall without being prompted.

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2/10 Supported teachers by putting approx. 20 sound walls 

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2/10 Supported teachers by putting approx. 20 sound walls 

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"Sound walls can indeed be a useful tool, but it's important to acknowledge that they are a popular trend without much research support. I question the value of long, detailed discussions about how a certain sound is formed in the mouth, and students shouldn't be expected to associate terms like stop, fricative, and affricate with particular phonemes. If you choose to incorporate a sound wall, use it in a way that makes sense to you and your students; don't get bogged down by the details."

Thoughts on this?

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The Literacy 50 by Melissa Loftus and Lori Sappington

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The Literacy 50 by Melissa Loftus and Lori Sappington

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"Sound walls are very popular. As with word walls, researchers have not yet proven whether they are beneficial, but they seem to help students learn letter-sound correspondences."

Sound walls contain: sound cards, articulation cards, and letter cards.

"When you introduce a phoneme, model how to make the sound, point to the articulation card on the wall, and teach the most common grapheme or graphemes to spell the sound. Students look at the articulation card for each phoneme and talk about how the lips, tongue, or teeth are in a particular place. From there, add the sound and grapheme on the sound wall.

Use articulation cards

Use mirrors

"Don't spend a lot of time on the sound wall during instruction. Draw students' awareness to it at appropriate points in your instruction and keep it moving. Dont wait until you have "perfected" the wall. Just give it a try. Work with colleagues who want to try sound walls and share ideas and experiences."